The cool-down performance after soaking is very important in an automotive air-conditioning system and is considered as the key design variable. Therefore, understanding of the overall transient characteristics of the system is essential to the preliminary design as well as steady-state characteristics. The objective of this study is to develop a computer simulation model and estimate theoretical1y the transient performance of an automotive air-conditioning system. To accomplish this, a mathematical modelling of each component, such as compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator, is presented first of all. For a detailed calculation, condenser and evaporator are divided into many subsections. Each sub-section is an elemental volume for modelling. In models of expansion valve and compressor, dynamic behaviors are not considered in an attempt to simplify the ana1ysis, but the quasi-static ones are just considered, such as the relation between mass flow rate and pressure drop in expansion device, polytropic process in compressor, etc. The developed simulation model is validated with a comparison to laboratory test data of an automotive air-conditioning system. The overall time-tracing properties of each component agreed fairly well wish those of test data in this case.